Next Up: Flourishing Florence
Day 4
All aboard the charter bus to Florence!
Once we arrived in the stunning city, our tour group walked to Vivoli for homemade gelato. It was our favorite gelato shop in Italy! I ordered stracciatella and fragola, and Peter chose limon and fragola.
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Then, we walked to Basilica Santa Croce where we saw the tombs of Galileo, Michelangelo, Dante, Rossini, and other notable people. Our local tour guide took us to the David statue replica where it used to stand when weather permitted it to stay outside before they moved the real deal inside of The Accademia museum.
Day 5
We went on a backstreets tour where we saw Florence's city walls, the Ponte Vecchio bridge, the Pitti Palace, and many other sights! In the Santo Spirito church, we gazed at Michelangelo's life-sized wooden sculpture of Jesus on the cross.
​​​​​​Our tour group put on our chef hats and aprons for an afternoon cooking course! Peter and I helped make a 3 course meal of homemade tagliatelle pasta with tomato and mushrooms, chicken, and panna cotta for dessert. It was a fun and unique experience that we enjoyed!
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Later that afternoon, Peter and I climbed over 400 stairs to the top of Brunelleschi's Dome to see a breath-taking view of Florence. Then, we climbed an additional 400 steps to the top of the bell tower! We could see the dome we climbed not long before scaling the tower. Thankfully, we could get fresh air through windows on various floors of the tower!
Day 6
Our tour group visited the Uffizi Museum where we saw many paintings from The Renaissance Period. We viewed works of Michelangelo, Leonardo di Vinci, and many more!
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During our free time break, Peter and I went to the Pitti Palace, Boboli Gardens, Galileo Museum, and Vivoli gelato! Then, we met our group to view David by Michelangelo in The Accademia. It was unreal to see the huge statue carved out of marble.